Titillating Troopers

It has long been said that working for the government means great benefits. Working for the NC Highway Patrol apparently means reeeaalllly great benefits. To wit, “Sex-on-duty has traditionally been perceived (or at least jokingly referred to as) an expected fringe benefit.” That’s some kind of recruiting! Get that in the paper and you should have hopefuls out the wazzoo – that’s what they’re there for, after all. I’m not sure you’d get the best candidates by tacitly approving sex during work hours, but perhaps you can make up with quantity what you lack in quality.

It’s unfair, of course, to tar all patrol employees with the same skeevy brush, but it’s hard not to find that distasteful at the very least. What kind of person wants to carry a gun and get laid on the job? Besides security guards on porn sets? Is that a good way to get the caliber of person we have a right to expect a state trooper to be? I don’t think so, but I don’t know much about recruiting and retaining law enforcement officers.

The head of the Highway Patrol, Col. Randy Glover, presumably knows more than me, and, believe it or not, he’s on the job. Together with his boss, Secretary of Crime Control and Public Safety and On-the-Job Tail (I made up part of that) Reuben Young, he sent out an email reminding patrolmen and employees to watch theyselves.

The North Carolina State Highway Patrol is a proud organization that has always maintained high standards. Our status as one of the country’s best law enforcement agencies is well deserved, but often scrutinized. It is easy for the entire organization to be judged by the acts of a few, so each and every one of us owe it to our fellow troopers to be morally and ethically beyond reproach.”

I understand that it would be disheartening to read this sort of news about an organization that one serves honorably:

A number of troopers have been demoted or fired in the past two years for offenses including drunken driving, profiling young women for traffic stops, having sex on duty and animal abuse.

This week, a former Highway Patrol sergeant had a court hearing in his effort to be reinstated after he was fired for having a drunken sexual encounter with a subordinate’s wife.”

However, the tone of the email seems a little off to me. When an independent report says employees laughingly call work-time trysts a benny, it would seem the problem does not lie in being “often scrutinized.” It sounds like a systemic issue, one that top brass utterly failed to handle. How namby-pamby to pretend that the problem is that someone has the audacity to examine the workings of the highway patrol. It’s going to take a little more than a peppy e-pistle to whip this bunch into shape. I hope Randy and Rube are up to the job.

One Comment

jonathan

September 25, 2009 at 8:52 am

There are bad apples in every bunch. It seems a bit unfair to say that they need to whip the bunch into shape. It seems beyond likely you are lumping many great men and women of high moral fiber in with the despicable actions of a few.